Little Sparkles 6/2015

It’s been a week of kitchen drama this week in which I’ve become far too stressed than necessary. Mr S has helped to put things into perspective and reminded me not to stress over material goods which can easily be replaced. After many phone calls and emails things are now proceeding more smoothly but it’s been a challenging week. However, as always there are sparkles and it’s been Pancake day which is always a favourite in our household and with an Inset day today, we’ve had an early start to half term.

Sparkle 1 : Pancake Day

We normally do pancakes after school but as Tuesday is our busy day we decided to start with a pancake breakfast as we have more time in the mornings. It was a brilliant way to start the day and whilst Little Miss had a little toss of her pancake, Little Man preferred not to risk his. The fillings were classic lemon and sugar. As is tradition I took a photo of the children cooking their pancakes, it’s one of those traditional poses we do each year and send to the grandparents and this year Mr S too who was away. As I had some batter left over we had a little pancake for tea too but our best ones were definitely for breakfast.

Sparkle 2 : Bright sunshine

There were 3 occasions this week when the clouds lifted and we had some stunning weather, crisp blue skies and warm sunshine. Luckily, I was outside on all 3 occasions and felt wonderful, the sun makes me happy, relaxed and energised. Life is better in sunglasses! On Sunday morning, we were at a local beach in the sunshine and the children were happily playing in the sand dunes, rolling down, laughing and pretending they were Star wars heroes, a man passed us walking his dog and commented that it was a little bit of heaven, I couldn’t have agreed more.

Sparkle 3 : Quality Viewing

I’m not a teary person, but two programmes had me in floods of tears this week, Call the Midwife with another tragic tale of a thalamidime baby and a documentary on assisted suicide. On two consecutive evenings this week, I happened upon some really quality viewing, connected unexpectedly by a theme of Motor Neurone Disease. The first was a documentary called Simon’s Choice about a man’s decision to take his own life in an assisted suicide, it was honest, thought provoking and heart breaking and offered a credible argument for assisted suicide. However by chance I also watched the film, The Theory of Everything, based on the autobiography of Stephen Hawking’s first wife for another perspective on life with MND. In a particularly striking scene she insists that he is to be resuscitated and to live when doctors thought it may be kinder otherwise. It was a curious juxtaposition of programmes, one showing a man living with MND and the other showing a man dying of MND. Personally I think assisted suicide is a very difficult and complex decision and one that needs to be addressed with a calm and balanced debate.